Our Team

What We Do

The Secretariat...

• provides a «best-practice clearing house» drawing from the national experiences of our Members
• seeks to build consensus among our Members on concrete actions at national level to best address environmental challenges in our Strategy Meetings
• supports the coordinated implementation of these concrete actions
• provides user-friendly information and insights into environmental policy developments at EU level in a weekly electronic bulletin, free of charge, to all Members sitting on national parliamentary Environment Committees all across Europe
• organises cycles of parliamentary hearings and conferences in co-operation with our extensive network of contacts in the EU and national administrations; the academia, the civil society and the business sector. We also receive frequent invitations for our Members to high-level conferences organised by the wider environmental policy community in Brussels and elsewhere. We can also support the organisation of fact-finding visits to Brussels for national legislators upon request.

In short, the Secretariat aims to enable our Members to work on environmental legislation in their respective legislatures more effectively, and to facilitate their direct or indirect participation in the European decision-making process regarding sustainable development and biodiversity protection. Our aim is to help them push for the adoption of ambitious environmental legislation and its successful implementation.

The Secretariat’s Director is Rafa J. Aybar. He is assisted by an EP Co-ordinator, an Executive Assistant and one intern. The parliamentary staff of our Members at the European Parliament and the national parliaments in Europe are of course an indispensable part of the GLOBE community. Doeke Eisma, former Member of GLOBE (as a former MEP and MP at the Dutch Second and First Chamber of Deputies), and Nicolas Tavitian, former GLOBE Europe Director, act as external advisors.

Rafael Jiménez-Aybar, Co-ordinator (Spain)

Rafa holds a MA in European Integration and Social Development from the  Free University of Brussels and a MA in International Relations from the Université Paris XI - John Hopkins Institute. He worked as a parliamentary assistant for Marco Cappato MEP (2002-2004), serving in the EP Committees on Industry, Transport and Energy and on Civil Liberties, and then for Andrew Duff MEP (2004-2006), leader of the British Liberal Democrat EP delegation and ALDE Spokesman on Constitutional Affairs. In 2007 he worked as a parliamentary liaison officer for the international road transport union in charge of monitoring the Mid-term review of the White Paper on Transport Policy of the EU. He has also volunteered for FERN (Forests and Environmental Resources Network) and worked as an EU affairs consultant in the UK and Belgium.

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Doeke Eisma, Advisor (The Netherlands), MA in Sociology, was a Member of the Dutch Senate (1970-1976) and a Member of the Second Chamber (1986-1994) on behalf of the political party Democrats 66. He was a Member of the European Parliament (1980-1984 and 1994-1999) as the European Liberal Party co-ordinator for Environment. He was the Chairman of the Waddenzee Society (2000-2004) and of the Dutch Committee of the IUCN (World Conservation Union) from 2000 to 2007 and acted as a senior advisor to 3 Dutch nature conservation organisations on relations with the European Union (2000 to 2006). He is GLOBE Europe's Senior Advisor.